By Jeff Powalisz
All eyes were trained on the city of Boston and the Northeastern men’s track program last Saturday at the Adidas Boston Indoor Games at the Reggie Lewis Center.
The 16-team event saw teams such as Albany, Yale and Colgate make their way to the city, but the Huskies made sure their home presence was the dominant factor, as they won the large-scale event with 117.33 total points.
Their rivalry with Albany continued in the event, as they beat out the Great Dane Classic winners for the title. Albany finished with 108 points, while Southern Connecticut (91.33), UNH (53.50) and Yale (53) rounded out the top five of the day.
“It was important to us because it was a home meet,” said Northeastern coach Sherman Hart. “You never let anybody beat you in your own house. We really had to send a message to teams like Albany and UNH that after the Great Dane Classic, we weren’t going to just roll over and die.”
The Huskies placed second in the Great Dane Classic on Jan. 18. The tough second-place finish in New York City was something that Hart said was still something they needed to get over.
“We needed to get our confidence back together,” he said. “We just needed our competitive confidence. We were very upset about our last meet, and we needed to feel good about ourselves.”
Defeating Albany, who won with 128.45 points in the Great Dane Classic to Northeastern’s 104.66, was something the team was focusing on.
“It was definitely satisfying [beating Albany],” Hart said. “The ultimate would be to beat them in three weeks, [America East Championship at Boston University] but it was good to put them back in their place. We needed them to take a step back.”
Freshmen Conrad Dalton and Obaro Emenike were among the key performers for the Huskies on the day.
Dalton placed third in the 500 meter dash, where his time of 1:05.41 fell behind a top-notch 1-2 finish of Georgetown’s James Graham (1:02.99) and Yale’s Robert DeLaski (1:03.32). Roscell Lopez-Pitts added support with a seventh-place time of 1:06.01.
Emenike came up big in the 55 meter dash, with a strong second-place finish of 6.43 seconds. He also added two points to the Huskies’ score in the competitive 200 meter dash, with a seventh-place time of 22.56.
“Obaro is doing really well,” said Husky junior Idris Payne. “He might be the fastest 55 meter dash runner on the team as a freshman and that’s a good thing.”
Payne continued to shine, finishing in first place in the 400-meter dash with a time of 47.54, securing key points for the team.
Tom Pratt and Jose Fernandez were instrumental in the important distance runs, as Fernandez earned points in the 800 with a fifth place finish (1:56.25) while Pratt ran extremely well in the 1000 with a time of 2:31.66, good for second place overall.
Matt Valuk and Peter Jasmin were a strong 2-3 combination in the 55-meter hurdles, as their times of 7.80 and 7.91, respectively, were behind only Paul Roche of Albany (7.62).
In the field events, Husky Chad Barboza pushed his way into the top eight of the high jump, with a finish of 6-2, while Pitts was fifth in the long jump (21-07.25).
The Huskies really shined in the pole vault, where Mike Couch, Aaron Hill, and Ryan Cahill finished atop the leader board with scores of 15-6, 15-0, and 15-0, respectively. The next highest finisher was Jordan Chapman of Yale who was well behind at 14-6.
“We took this meet very seriously,” Payne said. “It was our meet, we were at home. We had to show all of the teams there who the best team was and the results show that it was us.”
The Huskies move on through their winter schedule at the Boston University Open on Saturday.
